Booooooks!
Sep. 4th, 2011 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalIt's time for another one of my sporadic book review posts!
Ghost Story by Jim Butcher
Heh, so, everyone probably read this ages ago, but oh well. In general, I've felt that Butcher's writing was improving with each installment of The Dresden Files, so I was kinda disappointed that this one seemed kind of sloppy. The story was okay; I liked Harry being a ghost because it changed things up quite a bit, giving him new powers but also new limitations. But because Harry's a ghost and can't interact with people as much as he usually does, the narrative is very introspective and philosophical. Which, in moderation, is fine - obviously afterlife experiences prompt a lot of self-reflection - but this crossed the line into self-indulgent and there were times when I wanted to say, "Okay, Harry, GET ON WITH IT." With long tangents every time Harry has a memory of something, the pacing really drags.
I also found it frustrating that the plot is laid out as "Harry returns as a ghost to solve his own murder" - and then he spends the ENTIRE book running around doing other things and doesn't make a single effort to figure out his killer, only to have the answer handed to him on a silver platter at the end. Meh.You could skip the entire thing, just read the last two and a half chapters, and you'd be all caught up for the next in the series.
And I get why, from a plot perspective, it was necessary that Thomas not be involved, but I MISS HIM.
Snow White, Blood Red by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
This is an anthology of "fairy tales for grown-ups" - either a more adult spin on the classics or original stories in the style of fairy tales. Unfortunately, the editors seem to think that the only way to make fairy tales darker and more grown-up is to throw in lots and lots of rape and molestation of children. I mean, SURELY there must be other "dark themes" out there besides graphic sex and violence, right? I also made the mistake of assuming that a more modern take on fairy tales would perhaps include some more empowering roles for women. Alas, I was gravely mistaken, since the women in these stories exist mainly to be prized for their virginity, used and abused by men, and then punished for having sex. A few of the individual stories were good, but not enough to make the book worth it.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Rose is nine years old when she discovers she can taste her mother's emotions in the lemon-chocolate cake she made for Rose's birthday. Rose is soon overwhelmed by all the emotions contained in the food she eats. Sadness, anger, happiness, love, guilt, shame - she experiences it all as if it were her own. Eventually, she can even trace the origins of her food - whether her orange juice came from Florida oranges or California ones, what kind of mood the farmer was in when he milked his cows, and she can tell to the county where her eggs came from. In order to keep herself from going insane, she subsists mainly on processed junk food, which has so little human contact that it tastes blissfully bland.
I really identified with Rose's complex relationship with food. My issues were somewhat different, of course, but I recognized the anxiety of knowing that the wrong food choices can hurt you, and the panic it can inspire when you don't know whether what you're about to eat will cause you pain, and the frustration at knowing that you can't just stop eating and avoid it. Ultimately, though, I think Rose's emotional journey - the burden she bears, the isolation her "gift" causes her, and the ways she discovers to cope with it - is very relatable even without an eating disorder. At its core, this is a story about a family, their foibles and quirks, and all the secrets they are hiding, things that Rose wishes with all her heart that she didn't know - and yet, at the same time, it's valuable in helping her to understand them better.
The ending is... a little weird, owing to a subplot involving Rose's brother, but the writing is beautifully descriptive throughout and definitely worth reading.
Ghost Story by Jim Butcher
Heh, so, everyone probably read this ages ago, but oh well. In general, I've felt that Butcher's writing was improving with each installment of The Dresden Files, so I was kinda disappointed that this one seemed kind of sloppy. The story was okay; I liked Harry being a ghost because it changed things up quite a bit, giving him new powers but also new limitations. But because Harry's a ghost and can't interact with people as much as he usually does, the narrative is very introspective and philosophical. Which, in moderation, is fine - obviously afterlife experiences prompt a lot of self-reflection - but this crossed the line into self-indulgent and there were times when I wanted to say, "Okay, Harry, GET ON WITH IT." With long tangents every time Harry has a memory of something, the pacing really drags.
I also found it frustrating that the plot is laid out as "Harry returns as a ghost to solve his own murder" - and then he spends the ENTIRE book running around doing other things and doesn't make a single effort to figure out his killer, only to have the answer handed to him on a silver platter at the end. Meh.You could skip the entire thing, just read the last two and a half chapters, and you'd be all caught up for the next in the series.
And I get why, from a plot perspective, it was necessary that Thomas not be involved, but I MISS HIM.
Snow White, Blood Red by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
This is an anthology of "fairy tales for grown-ups" - either a more adult spin on the classics or original stories in the style of fairy tales. Unfortunately, the editors seem to think that the only way to make fairy tales darker and more grown-up is to throw in lots and lots of rape and molestation of children. I mean, SURELY there must be other "dark themes" out there besides graphic sex and violence, right? I also made the mistake of assuming that a more modern take on fairy tales would perhaps include some more empowering roles for women. Alas, I was gravely mistaken, since the women in these stories exist mainly to be prized for their virginity, used and abused by men, and then punished for having sex. A few of the individual stories were good, but not enough to make the book worth it.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Rose is nine years old when she discovers she can taste her mother's emotions in the lemon-chocolate cake she made for Rose's birthday. Rose is soon overwhelmed by all the emotions contained in the food she eats. Sadness, anger, happiness, love, guilt, shame - she experiences it all as if it were her own. Eventually, she can even trace the origins of her food - whether her orange juice came from Florida oranges or California ones, what kind of mood the farmer was in when he milked his cows, and she can tell to the county where her eggs came from. In order to keep herself from going insane, she subsists mainly on processed junk food, which has so little human contact that it tastes blissfully bland.
I really identified with Rose's complex relationship with food. My issues were somewhat different, of course, but I recognized the anxiety of knowing that the wrong food choices can hurt you, and the panic it can inspire when you don't know whether what you're about to eat will cause you pain, and the frustration at knowing that you can't just stop eating and avoid it. Ultimately, though, I think Rose's emotional journey - the burden she bears, the isolation her "gift" causes her, and the ways she discovers to cope with it - is very relatable even without an eating disorder. At its core, this is a story about a family, their foibles and quirks, and all the secrets they are hiding, things that Rose wishes with all her heart that she didn't know - and yet, at the same time, it's valuable in helping her to understand them better.
The ending is... a little weird, owing to a subplot involving Rose's brother, but the writing is beautifully descriptive throughout and definitely worth reading.
